Can You Hear the Background Noise?: Silences and Silencing in Mon coeur à l’étroit (Marie NDiaye, 2007) and White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)

BRAKC SEMINAR SERIES

Can You Hear the Background Noise?: Silences and Silencing
in
Mon coeur à l’étroit (Marie NDiaye, 2007)
and
White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)

by Geoff Brown and Pauline Eaton
(Birkbeck)

"At the heart of Marie NDiaye's Mon Coeur a l'étroit is an unspoken event, and the novel's plot is woven from silenced threads of narrative. Pauline Eaton’s paper will illustrate the effectiveness of this narrative silencing, which suppresses kinship and community, and ask whether NDiaye's recent work, which specifies what was previously indicible is less powerful as a consequence.

The dialogue in White Material is fragmented, incidental, ineffective. It contrasts starkly with the evocations of the silent landscape and the mood music of the film. Geoff Brown’s paper will demonstrate that the soundtrack - whether musical score or ambient noise - conveys the significance of events in ways untouched by the alternating chatter and taciturnity of the characters."

Geoff Brown and Pauline Eaton